Garlic 2013-14

Today, the garlic is planted; it took three people about a week to put in a 3/4 acre by hand. Next comes the mulching of the field with straw, to suppress the weeds, that we do just before a snowfall to set it in and keep the Winter wind from blowing it away. Our garlic overwinters in the ground and sprouts in April; its harvest is on the 4th of July, so patriotic it is. We plant a hard-neck garlic, a German White (a porcelain variety which is stronger), that keeps until February; unlike the milder soft-neck garlic that you find year-round in supermarkets, it is not irradiated (or killed) for shelf life. You can plant our garlic and it will grow, but supermarket garlic, usually exported from other countries, will not; it's DOA at your table. So unpatriotic (it can't even salute the flag), this globalized irradiated garlic, but it's cheaper. Yes, offshore food exemplifies the adage of being penny-wise and pound-poor.